MODULAR DESIGN FOR MANDARIN TEXT-TO-SPEECH SYNTHESIS

In the European Union funded project Technology and Corpora for Speech-to-Speech Translation (TC-STAR) [3], we have developed a modular concatenative TTS system for Mandarin Chinese. A common architecture has been introduced based on well-defined modules and interfaces. Three main modules, text processing, prosody processing and acoustic synthesis modules, are used following a commonly employed approach. A large number of applications can benefit from using the high-quality TTS design. Preliminary evaluations have shown promising performance and flexibility.